of the French, the columns received orders to change direction to the left. After some hours' march eastward they crossed a river, but the men did not know that the bridge lay over the Marque and that it led them towards the battlefield of Bouvines; nor was it until dawn that they saw the gray walls and the four spires of Tournay before them, and discovered that they had invested the city.
Tournay had been fortified by Vauban and was one of the strongest fortresses in France,[1] but its garrison had been weakened by the unsuspecting Villars, and there was little hope for it. The heavy artillery of the Allies, which had been sent to Menin, went down the Lys to Ghent and up the Scheldt to the besieged
June 26./July 7. city, the trenches were opened on the 7th of July, and after three weeks, despite of the demonstrations of Villars and incessant heavy rain, Tournay was
July 19/23. reduced to surrender.[2] Then followed the siege of the citadel, the most desperate enterprise yet undertaken by the Allied troops, inasmuch as the subterraneous works were more numerous and formidable than those above ground. The operations were, therefore, conducted by mine and countermine, with destructive explosions and confused combats in the darkness, which tried the nerves of the soldiers almost beyond endurance. The men did not object to be shot, but they dreaded to be buried alive by the hundred together through the springing of a single mine.[3] Four*
- ↑ There are still some remains of the old walls of Tournay on the south side of the town, and the ruins of Vauban's citadel close by, from which the extent of the works may be judged.
- ↑ The British regiments employed in the siege were the 1st Royals (2 battalions), 3rd Buffs, 37th, Temple's, Evans's and Prendergast's Foot.
- ↑ The following description written from the trenches gives some idea of the work: "Now as to our fighting underground, blowing up like kites in the air, not being sure of a foot of ground we stand
